LORD LYTTON'S SCREAM.
IT is not necessary to answer, or to discuss even seriously the allegations of Lord Lytton's speech at Woodstock. They answer themselves. When a man who has failed as Governor- General, after costing England and India in that capacity more than twenty millions, asserts publicly that the strongest majority of our day was elected by a "sinister combination " of men intent on dismembering the kingdom, and men willing to allow it to be dismembered ; that to say the majority has not disappeared, is a calumny on the country ; that England has -" been placed under the uncontrolled initiative of France, and the ostentatious patronage of Russia ;" that the "itinerant oratorical trumpet," Mr. Gladstone, " brayed defiance " of Austria on the hustings, and humbly apologised to Austria in the Cabinet ; that the sole effort of the Govern- ment has been to help foreigners to rob their neighbours of their provinces, and that Montenegro among other States obtained territory " without fighting for it ;" that Mr. Glad- stone has endorsed the idea that England should be reduced to a single speck in the sea ; that he " only employs office for revolutionary legislation ;" that Mr. Chamberlain has avowed how he and his colleagues " deliberately tolerated crimes " to obtain the repeal of an unjust law, which law was their own Land Law of 1870 ; that Mr. Gladstone arrested Mr. Parnell for resisting him ; that Ireland "enjoys the tranquillity enjoyed by England in the days of the Heptarchy, and by Scotland in the days of Macbeth ;" and that Mr. Gladstone is the instrument of the most violent Radi- calism, drawing its inspiration from abroad,—there is no need of a reply. Englishmen are not Irishmen, who delight in mere rhetoric as other races delight in music, and give to the man who raves in melodious sentences the praise they give to any other performer for their amusement. Englishmen demand from their leaders, even in their moments of abandon, some common-sense, some respect for facts, if not for troth, some freedom from that rancorous spitefulness which is to true indignation what a giggle is to a burst of laughter. They are not amused by a virago, but by her subjuga- tion. They are incapable through their foibles, as well as their good qualities, of treating a man who can talk like that, and pervert all facts like that, and swear in rhythmed sentences like that, as a serious politician at all. The Irish would laugh with pleasure at Lord Lytton's periods, and declare him " the finest spaker in the island," and turn away joyously to follow some cold-blooded, impassive, per- sistent sceptic who offered what they wanted ; but the English do not feel even the momentary pleasure, and will not repay the speaker even with half-sardonic applause. They are not indifferent to eloquence, but for them the best turned phrase must have some relation to fact, the most glowing rhetoric must be free from malignant absurdity. We have known them put up with nonsense, but it was nonsense that made them cheerier. When asked to hate, they want a little truth as provocation. They were stirred to emotion by the speeches in Midlothian, but the speeches at Woodstock will stir them only to derision.
For ourselves, Lord Lytton's speech has only one intellectual interest. What makes a man, with some literary capacity, though of a thin and frothy kind ; some knowledge of men, though they may not be Englishmen ; and a full intention of being as deadly as he can, take so foolish a line ? It is in Lord Lytton to be imaginative, and he is only grotesque ; to employ ridicule, and he only uses slander ; to be lightly humorous, and he is weakly savage ; why does he not, as mere matter of intellectual calculation, use his forces better ? He cannot be overpowered by long suppressed malice to such a degree that even the resources of art are no longer under his control. We do him the justice to believe that he is the victim of some illusion, and we think we see what it is. In his speech, in Lord Randolph Churchill's speeches, in Lord Salisbury's, in Sir Drummond Wolff's, even in Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett's, though it is, perhaps, hardly fair to quote any one so hopelessly ignorant of all things, we see the trace of one profound conviction. They all think that the late election was an accident ; that the English people is at heart " Imperialist ;" that it has no sense of right and wrong, and only thirsts for domination. They were so in- toxicated and, as it were, befooled by the applause which society gave to Lord Beaconsfield's policy of brag—applause never endorsed by the electors—so flattered to find themselves objects of admiration, that they thought they had distovered new elements of character in Englishmen hitherto unrevealed. They became certain that the people liked all that "high-falutin'" talk about the " Empire," especially when unaccompanied by sacri- fices, and though on the very first occasion the people said " No," that they were combative, but not Jingo, that they respected rights as well as claimed them, and did not want to quarrel with all mankind merely to show their courage, these politicians can- not rid themselves of their pleasant conviction. You see it in all they say. Lord Salisbury feels certain that the English want Afghanistan, per fas out Was, and are in- dignant at losing the Transvaal. Lord Lytton's only argu- ment is that no nation should think of anything but itself, and that " any association which transcends the definite limits of a nation "—say, for example, the Christian Church—" lies beyond a statesman's scope" of consideration. Lord Randolph Churchill is sure that Englishmen want Ire- land to be subjugated. Sir Drummond Wolff is satisfied that if it can only be shown that England is not in the ascendant in the East, the Government will be overthrown. And Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, who does not know where Poland is, is confident that his constituents are pining for foreign glory and influence and sway, in lands of which they are as ignorant as himself. The same illusion is in them all. They all believe that the country never condemned their policy ; that it is " still with them,"—which it never was for half an hour ; and that they have only to show that they are unchanged, still devoted to " Empire," still ready to engage in any enterprise, however mad, if only its result may be separation from France and humilia- tion to Russia, to be recalled to power at the dissolution with carte blanche. It is a curious view of the English character to be taken by so many men, who know that, though the English
will fight whenever defied, they never even noticed the loss of Hanover by their dynasty, that they never censured the Government of 1842 for leaving Afghanistan, that they have been savagely fretful under every South-African war, that they gave up the Ionian Islands on Lord Palmerston's advice without a word, that they mocked from the first at Cyprus, and that when carefully consulted by Lord Beaconsfield at the moment chosen by himself, through the constituencies he had himself called into being, they rejected him, with a decision hardly paralleled in history. It was all Mr. Gladstone Nonsense. The country flung out Mr. Gladstone in 1874, in unmistakable weariness of his teaching ; but let us admit that it was Mr. Gladstone. Why, if the country was and remains Imperialist, was it so charmed with the great opponent of Imperialism at the moment when the wickedness of Imperialism was his great subject? Is it not a little strange for publicans to elect Sir Wilfrid Lawson, for Protectionists to choose Mr. Bright, for Sheffield roughs to carry " General " Booth in triumph to the Capitol? The " Woodstocks " may be right in their view, but till the election proves them so, we can but wonder what is the influence which makes able men so blind, and doubt whether the ability attributed to them is not, like the rhetoric, at bottom unreal
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